Performing Personhood: Rites, Rituals and Cultural Practices of ...

Performing Personhood: Rites, Rituals and Cultural

Practices of Tangkhul Nagas

Synopsis Submitted to the Jawaharlal Nehru University

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

YAOREIPAM MK

Theatre and Performance Studies

School of Arts and Aesthetics

Jawaharlal Nehru University,

New Delhi-67

India

April, 2018

Abstract:

This research attempts to study the performative aspects of personhood as observed

through rites of passage, different rituals and cultural practices of Tangkhul Nagas. Changes and

transformations brought about by Christian missionaries led to the understanding of the world

around in different manner, affecting the nature of cultural performances including rituals in the

everyday life of the people. However, several pre-Christian rituals and performances continue to

exist. This research locates itself within the coexistence of pre-Christian belief systems alongside

the present Christian beliefs and practices, exploring the remnants and memories of the past as an

active presence in the present. Along with the change in belief systems and socio-cultural practices,

the notion of personhood also transformed. This research focuses on the transforming ideas of

personhood within the community, as seen through festivals, ceremonies and rituals around rites

of passage such as birth, puberty, marriage and death. The research shall thus examine how the

idea of Tangkhul personhood gets formulated through the interaction between the individual and

the community, human and non-human entities, material objects and immaterial practices.

Rationale and intervention

The misrepresentation of the belief systems and practices of the Tankhul Nagas 1 in

particular, and the Nagas in general, by the early missionaries, colonial ethnographers and

administrators may be understood as a conscious attempt to justify their controlling, ¡®civilizing¡¯

proselytizing mission in the region through a somewhat distorted reading of the form of religion,

world view and ideas of personhood. Tangkhul Naga history records a number of impacts like the

arrival of Western Colonialists and the American Baptist Missionary William Pettigrew 2 during

1

Tangkhul Nagas are one of the Naga tribes situated in the contiguous frontier areas of North-East India and

North-West Myanmar. Linguistically they have been classified under Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan

language family. This research is confined to the Tangkhul Nagas locating in Ukhrul district Manipur.

2

During the last decade of the nineteenth century, Rev. William Pettigrew, an American Baptist missionary was

deputed to work in Tangkhul inhabited region in the highlands of Manipur. He introduced Christianity along with

western education and philosophy to the indigenous people. In the present, census more than ninety nine percent

of the Tangkhul have converted into Christianity, which remains the dominant religion in the region.

the ending of the nineteenth century. Traditional beliefs and cultural practices as well as the ideas

of self-understanding were marked as deeply problematic by the western missionary. Many of the

core beliefs and practices were discredited and devalued leading to renunciation of such traditional

systems. From the early twentieth Century, Christian missionary sought to transform the belief and

practices. At present, vast population of the Tangkhul Nagas are converted Christians. The process

of conversion though begun early in the 20th century, reached its crescendo in the 1940s and sixties

after the students of William Pettigrew started evangelizing even in remote rural villages. Along

with the spreading of Christian religion, they introduced modern education system, and more

importantly established the written culture3 for the Tangkhul Nagas.

This has led to the

transformations of seeing and understanding the world around, ultimately leading to changes in

the nature of cultural performances including rituals in the everyday life of the people.

The Tangkhul Nagas still are trying to negotiate their selfhood and space in between the

past and the present which makes it essential for this research to understand the idea of personhood

through both the current practices of the Tankhul Nagas and the remnants of the past ¨C hidden deep

in the crevices of everyday lives. Remnants may be material and immaterial remembered through

actual remains, memories and nostalgia. The thesis hopes to look at the remains through material

and immaterial lenses: the immaterial aspect explored through the belief, socio-cultural practices

and performances while the material aspect explored through long beds Petkhok (long bed) of the

Longshim (Morung or Dormitory), the Lencheng (Specific House), the Tarung (Y- shaped totem

post), and the megaliths Onra (Megalith). Materials like Megalith, Lencheng, Y-Shaped totem post

are some of the materials remains that have lost their significant functions as well as their

performative importance but continue to exist as remains from the pasts. Most festivals and

ceremonies related to death have been stopped by the missionaries including Thisham Festival

(Soul-Departure festival), Chikhur Khamathai (Grave sanctification ceremony), Chikhur Kharui

(Grave Shifting ceremony), Onra Ceremony (Monumental Stone erection ceremony), Onra

Khamathai (Onra Sanctification ceremony), but there remain a number of other festivals related

to harvest, sowing of seeds as well as marriage, which have continued in somewhat changed but

3

The culture of writing came to the Tangkhuls only after William Pettigrew, an American Baptist Missionary

introduced it during the late 19th century. Only after the Christian missionaries brought Roman script, the Tangkhuls

began to transcribe using the new script.

recognizable forms. The performative practices of gift exchange, the ceremonial feasts, and the

community celebrations for births, marriages and deaths in the villages involving the larger

community beyond family, remain evidence of the past socio-cultural significances established

and reiterated through performances of the community. As the memory of the past is slowly

vanishing with the demise of the elders among the Tangkhul community, it is important to collect

and document these knowledge systems before complete erasure.

In this research I propose to look at the soul as a remnant from past belief systems. The

Tangkhul Nagas believe that once a person dies, the soul of the dead leaves the body in the form

of a small flying being generally accepted as the honey bee. The soul of the dead hover close to

the family unable to move on and thus resides close to the locality until Thisham Festival (Soul

Departure Festival) is observed by the end of the year as a send-off celebration that releases the

soul. This soul of the dead, according to their belief, migrates to a place called Kazeiram (Land of

the Dead) where all Tangkhul ancestral souls resides. There, new souls are welcomed by the spirits

of their kin and relatives and live like the life in the world of the living. They also believe that the

¡®Mangla¡¯ (souls) of the dead sometimes returns to its place of origin, usually that person¡¯s own

father¡¯s village. It is a common saying among the people ¡®not to be afraid of the dead when they

come to visit¡¯. The dead persons are called ¡®Kathinao¡¯. It is believed that death is caused by

¡®Kameo¡¯4 who are generally considered as the powerful spirits of the surroundings. This

cosmological theme of the Tangkhul Naga culture continue to encapsulate the concept of life after

death for the Tangkhul Nagas -even after extensive conversion to Christianity among them. For

them even now life is a journey and a person inherently a traveler. This thesis intends to analyze

the process of becoming an ancestor within the community as one of the principle inquiries into

construction of personhood.

Some Naga writers have suggested that since the intervention of Christianity most of the

beliefs and practices were abandoned, and most specifically the mortuary rituals were affected.

4

Kameo are spiritual being with power and faculties much greater than that of man, existed everywhere in the

world. And that the spiritual beings were almost always invariably inclined to use their power and faculties for

malignant rather than for benevolent.

Therefore, it is necessary to ask why those rituals and ceremonies were hugely affected and

transformed. It has also become important to understand the reasons behind the replacements of

some of those celebrations by other practices like burying of the dead in a cemetery instead of

burying in a family grave, as well as the reason for the reassertion of traditional value system.

Presently, there is a gradual realization within the community the necessity to reconstruct the past.

It will be the contention of this thesis to sought an intellectual approach in understanding the

complex socio-cultural practices of the Tangkhuls. I would argue that even though many beliefs

and practices are no longer performed, their present culture, beliefs and practices were built on the

debris of the pre-Christian way of living. Festivals, ceremonies, different rituals involve in the rites

of passage and even the physical materials including the landscape would provide an important

gateway to explore the concepts of Personhood in a transforming society. Attempt will be made

to see how the idea of Death and personhood are closely associated, death being considered central

to life. Keeping this in mind, I would attempt to study how this complex interconnected concepts

and practices are reflected more broadly on how cultural changes is understood. Keeping this

problems in mind, research would be conducted in Ukhrul district of Manipur.

Literary Review

Most of the early accounts of the Nagas during the colonial periods were written by

administrative officers who had served as political agents and military officers, while some works

were by anthropologists or historians. In most of these written accounts one can see that the

¡®viewpoint¡¯ of the administrators and the state remains prominent. However, one cannot help but

also take their accounts into consideration, as these accounts are a part of the few available sources

in the written form. Sir. James Johnstone¡¯s My Experiences in Manipur and Naga Hills (1896),

T.C Hodson¡¯s The Naga Tribes of Manipur (2011, 2nd ed), E W Dun Gazetteer of Manipur (1886),

G.A Grierson¡¯s Linguistic Survey of India (1903), Alexander Mackenzie¡¯s History of the Relation

of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier of Bengal (1884), J. P Mills¡¯

The Rengma Nagas(1937) and the Ao Nagas (1926), J.H. Hutton¡¯s The Sema Naga (1921) and The

Angami Nagas with some notes on the neighboring tribes (1921). Also, Some of William

Pettigrew¡¯s writings include ¡®Step by Step¡¯ (1897), Tangkhul Primer (1897), Tangkhul Naga

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